It shouldn’t surprise you that a proud “petrolhead” delivers one of the most recognizable opening lines in rock ‘n’ roll, “She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean,” using a car metaphor to help chronicle a mind-blowing night with an unforgettable woman.

“Absolutely, my darling, you see — you’ve spotted it!” says AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson, who then belts out the line in his distinctive voice. AC/DC is one of the greatest rock bands ever — their hard-edged sound make them the original badasses, garnering superstar status with 200 million albums sold worldwide.

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These titans of rock are poised to sell more units than any other act, with their first album in eight years “Black Ice” (without the help of iTunes, for which they are the rebel holdouts) out October 20, in one of the most anticipated CD releases this year.

Johnson took time out of his busy schedule before their first world tour since 2001 for a one-hour chat with Motor Trend Online to give a rare glimpse into his automotive alter-ego and participation in Historic Sportscar Racing.

While brothers Angus and Malcolm Young formed the band in Australia, Johnson, who helps write lyrics, hails from northern England. Belying the rock-star image, he comes across with no pretense, but instead is quite the comical, jovial, British chap, still with a very strong Geordie accent, even though he lives in Florida. But he does lead the life of a rock star when it comes to his taste in fine cars and literal life in the fast lane.

He talks much as he sings — with gusto, speaking with exclamation points (if one could, he does), underscoring words with his enthusiasm (his emails are even typed in ALL CAPS). Verbally, he punctuates most sentences with a polite “my darling” to this writer, although his “my” sounds like “me.”

They don’t do a ton of press, so I first thanked him for this exclusive. “Oh, it’s my pleasure, I’m a motorcar nut, I’ve read your magazine many times on many airplanes,” Johnson replies. “I’m a petrolhead, man, I’m nuts for it! I’m in a rock ‘n’ roll band, but all I live for basically is to go racing and be around fellow petrolheads. That’s why I go racing with HSR; it’s just the best racing organization out there for fun.”

Daily driverThese days, Johnson is rockin’ a 2007 Rolls-Royce Phantom he bought a few weeks ago. Surprisingly, with his success since joining the band in 1980 with their megahit album “Back in Black,” this is his first Rolls, which he rates an “absolute 10.” Turning 61 this month made him reflect: “I came from a mining village and nobody had any money. I promised myself one day I would buy one. It’s the best car I’ve ever had.”

On a scale of one to 10, he wanted to give it a million rating. “I’m still trying to find out where the bloody boot [trunk] switch is!” he laughs. “The instruction book is about as heavy as the Ten Commandments. You could use it as a jack!”

He traded in his Bentley Continental, which he adored. “I still do love it because I fell in love with the Audi engine, you know the W12 twin-turbo. I loved it that much, I’ve ordered myself an Audi R8.” The R8 should arrive in November. “I’ll be on tour, which is bloody just about typical, isn’t it?” he laughs.

Johnson wasn’t in the market for a Rolls, but his friend, a car dealer, nudged him, “He said, ‘Brian you’ve got to try it.’ I said, ‘It’s too big. I love this Bentley.’ He said, ‘I’ll send it down in a trailer for you and just have a drive.’ Well, of course, he knew what he was doing, the sneaky bugger. As soon as I got in it, I fell in love with it.”

“The first thing that took my breath away was when I put my foot down and I got to 60 in 5, I couldn’t believe it!” he continues. “It’s just so swift and comfy. Which is absolutely unlike my SWC3 race car that will just knock the living snot out of you when you’re going down in Sebring.”

He can’t stop singing its praises. “It’s just the dream. Where I lived, it was a cold mining place, a village called Dunston. The only time you saw a Rolls-Royce was when somebody died,” he says.

“There was one car on our street, a 1937 Woolsey. To see one of these giant things with big P 100 headlamps when you’re seven, you look up at the grille — it was enormous, like the Empire State Building. I said to my dad, ‘Why do they have such big doors?’ these wonderful, huge doors. ‘It’s obvious isn’t it, son? So they can get in without taking their top hats off,'” Johnson laughs.

The Rolls is what kings, queens, and prime ministers drove. “I was always scared in case people thought I was a snob. AC/DC — we’ve always kept ourselves way below the radar, and I love my sports cars. I’ve had my share of them.”

Other carsHe’s right. Johnson just gave away his beloved 1973 Jaguar XKE (he had it for 24 years) to his brother-in-law in Norway. “He stole it, and I’m still after him,” Johnson jests. “It was a very complicated heist, I think he got me drunk on Acquavit. He’d been asking for it the last 16 years, [begins to talk in a Norwegian accent], ‘Brian, one day you must sell me the Yaguar, I love the Yaguar and yours is beautiful.’ ‘I know it’s beautiful that’s why you’re not getting it.’ It’s now driving around the beautiful roads in the mountains of Norway.”

1957 Vespa 400Johnson may be one of the few in America to own a tiny white “lovely little” 1957 Vespa 400. Used as Johnson’s pit car, its number is “Half” so they dub it “half pint.” “It’s absolutely manual even to the point of pushing it. Some wisecrackers came to me and said, ‘I went to the junkyard the other day and asked if they had a windshield for a ’57 Vespa, and the chap said it sounds like a fair swap!’ Now I didn’t take kindly to that,” he says, breaking out in laughter.

Johnson rates his Vespa a minus 3 on a scale of 10 for reliability. “On a fun scale, it’s definitely a 10. I used to drive around town a lot but unfortunately it is very, very small, and this is Florida and there are a lot of big Lincolns. I think a lot of them, thought it was some kind of strange traffic cone. Like it wasn’t even there!” Johnson laughs. “It does naught to 60 in 14 days. It’s a little crackerjack.”

2008 Audi Q7“We just got the Audi Q7 just for whopping around town,” he says. He gives it a perfect 10. “I used to have the Range Rover LR3, which I loved very, very much. Then I test-drove this new Audi Q7, and it’s light years ahead of the competition. It’s not the prettiest vehicle, but it’s just absolutely superb.”

2008 Fiat 500 Johnson’s taste crosses a broad spectrum of the world’s most lusted-after cars. Along with the supercar R8, he owns what may be the automotive polar opposite, but equally coveted ride — the Fiat 500, which he keeps in England.

“I love that,” he says, warning, “Don’t ever see one — because you’ll buy it. You will! You’ll buy it on the spot!” When asked how he would rate his Fiat, he almost wants to say 10 again but instead offers, “Gosh, I’m starting to sound like a broken record, let’s give it a nine just so I don’t sound mental.”

He had a big, old Bentley 8.0L before that (the engine he says, “was 7.2, a huge mother. I miss it still.”) But he loves the Fiat because it goes about 60 mpg and has no congestion charge in London.

“As soon as my daughters saw it, they wanted one immediately and there’s such a waiting list for these things,” he says. “It’s got everything in it, you walk in with your telephone, it’s completely Bluetooth, you can slap your iPod in. It has everything in it that a BMW 5 Series has, apart from the huge engine.”

He recently drove up to Edinburgh to visit friends in the Fiat. “I looked down out at the clock and went, “Holy God, I’m doing 150 mph and there’s not a shudder or a shake! The gearbox has to be one of the finest little manual gearboxes I’ve used. It’s right about there with the Lotus Exige. It slips in before you know where you are. It’s just a wonderful wonder. I think it got engine and gearbox of the year from the journalists in Europe. Absolute gorgeous. I’m not going to see it again till ’09, but never mind,” Johnson says, with a tinge of regret.

2003 Plymouth ProwlerIn these last few years, Johnson has acquired some wonderful cars. He also owns a “little fun car,” a 2003 Plymouth Prowler, which unfortunately comes only in automatic. “That’s just bags and bags of fun. Just lots of noise and not much else actually,” Johnson laughs and gives it a 6 rating.

1973 Citroen DS 23 PallasHe almost forgets another car he owns, “What am I talking about? I’m such a silly bugger! I have my 1973 Citroen DS 23 Pallas. I drive it all the time. It’s still the most beautiful shape in the world. The mechanics are a bugger to keep up and running. Everything’s run on oil. Even the gearshift is the starter. You pull the gearshift and that starts the engine. You don’t have a brake pedal, you have a rubber button. It’s just a rubber button on the floor and you just press it and the harder you press it…” he says, trailing off in laughter. “It’s a strange old thing.”

Johnson rates his Citroen an 8. “I’m sure mechanics would give it 2 because it is a bugger to work on.”

Car he learned to drive in Johnson learned to drive in a used 1959 Ford Popular, which his dad bought for 50 pounds for his 17th birthday. “‘Sit up and beg’ as we called them in England,” he laughs. It had a three-speed gearbox with bakelite switches and one windshield wiper. “When you went up a hill, if it was raining and you were in second gear, the windshield wiper would travel at a snail’s pace. You just couldn’t see out of the bloody thing.”

The Popular was beige with a salmon-pink interior. “The color scheme was not what you’d called a ‘chick magnet.’ It was real rummage material, but I didn’t care. I was the King of the Road! After years of riding bicycles, here I was behind the wheel of my own car!”

One funny experience occurred at dusk. “There is one lovely story: I fell in love with this girl. I went to see her, she lived in Shieldfield across the river, nine miles from Dunston,” Johnson says, his voice lowers to a whisper. “I said good night to her on a Sunday night; I had to go to work in the morning. It was a cul-de-sac, so I reversed to the main road and to my horror the thing stuck in reverse! I drove it nine miles backward!”

He adds the headlights were a paltry six volts anyway. “You couldn’t do it now, you’d just get killed. There weren’t many cars at that time. I drove it over the Tyne bridge down hills all the way back home to the house in reverse. I couldn’t move my neck the next day,” he laughs.

Before he would traverse the globe many times as a rock star, Johnson drove all over the world in his mind as a kid in his Dunston bedroom. Since driving represented freedom, he longed to drive, so learning was easy. “I just took to it like a dog to water.”

At age six, Johnson’s father bought him a steering wheel and put a stick through it. “I put it through the headboard of my bed and put four cushions up. My dad would shake his head. I would drive all over the world. I’d just be sitting there, brrrr!” he makes an engine sound. “I could hear my father say to my mother ‘We’re going to have to do something about him.'”

Back then, rock star was not yet a career option, so Johnson would daydream of one day becoming a bus driver. “I wanted to be a bus driver more than anything,” he explains. “When I was in school, I used to look out the window and see the big red double-deck buses driving by. It just looked so free. Then you’d hear, ‘Johnson, pay attention when you’re in school!’ ‘Oh, sorry, sorry, mate!'”

First car bought Johnson traded in the Popular for a 1957 Hillman Minx. It was a valuable life lesson on vanity. “It was the worst thing I ever did. This car was a two-toned car — white and rust,” he laughs. “It was just an absolute dog of a car that some real bad man had just painted over the rust. I thought it looked flashier — it had a lovely chrome grille and lots of chrome switches. I found out all that glitters is not gold.”

It was 1963, and Johnson’s first band was the Gobi Desert Canoe Club, so the Minx was the band car. They would load two amps, pile in, and split gas fare. “It was my first band, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing,” he recalls. They played in church halls and any venue that would have them in an area of two villages, because they all still lived with their parents.

“We were driving to a gig and the trunk of the car — the bottom fell out. It collapsed completely and amplifiers were all over the place,” Johnson bursts into laughter. “I can laugh now, but believe me at the time we were in tears. That was the end of the band.”

Favorite road trip Johnson’s favorite road trip was one he took in 1966 with his brother from Dunston through the South of France over the mountains and into Northern Italy to their aunt in Frascati and later through the St. Bernard Pass. “It has to be one of the most beautiful trips in the world,” he reflects. “It was the biggest adventure we’d ever been on.” They drove from Northern England to Dover, got on a ferry across to Calais, France, then to the South of France down the Autostrada del Sol in Italy, “which was wonderful,” and finally arriving in Frascati.

Johnson’s racing alter egoRock stars are fond of comparing the adrenaline on stage to great sex — the build up, the thrill, the delicious aftermath. Ever the petrolhead, Johnson likens rockin’ out in front of thousands to the track. “It’s a bit like being on stage. It’s a big rush when the flag drops at the start of the race, but you can’t give everything away, you’ve got to try to keep some of it for later in the race.”

Johnson got initiated into auto racing around 1992 the way many of us do — his wife, Brenda, gave him a Christmas gift to attend Skip Barber Racing School at what was then Sears Point. But he didn’t take it up again for another three or four years, when he was invited to be in a celebrity race at the Cleveland Grand Prix.

“We were driving these little Geo things,” he says, then interrupts himself. “Can I tell you a story about a Geo, my darling? I’ll tell you quickly. What’s the difference between a Geo and a sheep?” I don’t know. “It’s not half as embarrassing getting out the back of a sheep. Okay! Let’s continue! Of course, it’s filthy, it’s coming from me! I can’t help it. But it’s a grand joke, I love that joke. Go on, have a laugh!”

He resumes: “It was the Indy cars — that was before that idiotic split that has ruined American racing. I finished fourth or fifth and I’d never raced before. All these other guys had uniforms and boots. I had a pair of jeans and sneakers on! I enjoyed it so much. I thought, ‘God, this is great fun!'”

When Johnson got back home to Florida, he rang his Swedish friend, Thomas, who looks after his cars. “I said, ‘Thomas, do you think we could start racing?’ [switching to a low register and slow, choppy Swedish accent] ‘He said, ‘Historic Racing is the only way to start. It’s good,’ I asked, ‘Can you find me something?’ He said, ‘I go out and look.’ And he got me a Lotus Cortina Mark 1.”

Race career begins like baptism by fire (or rain)They prepped the Cortina and went to Johnson’s first race at Road Atlanta about 12 years ago. It was a race he will never forget. “I was doing the one-hour enduro, and I wasn’t doing too badly. I was leading my class and it started to rain — a downpour.”

He wasn’t prepared for rain. “I still had dry tires, and I didn’t even have windshield wipers. In my microphone I said to Thomas in the pits, ‘I can’t see anything!’ Cars were sliding all over the place. I said, ‘It’s frickin’ dangerous out here!’ He said, calmly in the low, slow, Swedish accent, ‘You have only five minutes to go. You are leading your class. Keep going.'”

Johnson continues: “I said, ‘Thomas, I’m literally having to stick my head out of the car and push around the corners, it’s that lethal!’ ‘How long have you been out?’ ‘I dunno, 55 minutes?’ He said, ‘Well, you should know your way around by now.’ ‘I can’t see out the window, I’ve got no windshield wipers, what’s wrong with you?’ ‘Just keep going. Do not stop.'”

Johnson kept going all right. “I went up the hill at the end of the back straightaway and the car aquaplaned. I hit that bridge so hard and overturned down the hill,” he laughs. “That was my first race.” Although he only had a few bruises, Johnson thought he would get a helicopter ride, but that didn’t happen because of the rain. They went back to the paddock, and the wrecked car arrived on the back of a truck.

“I loved it,” Johnson says of the thrill. “The fun thing was after this happened. The car was absolutely destroyed, I thought, oh, my god. Then a pickup truck came around the corner.”

It was his friend, Jesse James Dupree, lead singer of Jackyl. It may as well have been a parting of the clouds at that moment, because all was forgotten briefly when Dupree brought a whole barbequed pig in the back of his truck. “He said [switching to a Southern drawl] ‘I just came to see you race, boy!’ I said, ‘Well, there’s the car.’ He said, ‘Never mind, I got a pig.’ In the rain, five minutes after the crash we were sitting around this wrecked car, eating pig and drinking beer.”

Historic Sportscar Racing Johnson races two vintage cars — his 1970 Royale RP-4 and a Pilbeam MP84 in Historic Sportscar Racing. Brenda, his wife of 22 years, also races, in a 1957 Bugeye Sprite. Johnson loves the band of brothers that is auto racing.

“Some people are just daft,” he says. “You can’t just give it all away and get into the lead — suddenly you realize you’ve screwed your tires, you’ve damaged your front end. Everybody wants the corner first and everybody screws up, and every week afterward Ken Fengler [HSR competition director] will be up on the microphone saying [sounding official] ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, listen — the race is not won in the first corner. Please, please! Let’s have a good race. There’s a whole hour to race.'”

Racing’s inherent frisson of danger may be its appeal, but for Johnson, much of the thrill is in the process of the competition. “I love it, even if you don’t win, even if you’ve had a battle in the middle of the field with a fellow competitor that’s just a good, clean fight. I’m very proud to say I’ve had a few podiums lately, and it’s just the best feeling in the world to be at the pointy end of the race rather than be at the back.”

But what is most poignant is the bond between fellow racers in HSR. “Once something broke on my car and I went, ‘Well, my race weekend is finished.’ Ken Fengler put it out that we need this part, can anybody help. Within 20 minutes, two guys came over and said, ‘Here you go, please give it back at the end of the race.’ It’s just lovely. They realize what it’s like to be disappointed. You spend all this money, you get yourself all the way there. You think you’ve got everything you need. Always something breaks that you just haven’t got,” he breaks out in laughter. “That’s called Sods Law.”

Automakers in the U.K. and U.S.The Pilbeam is made in England, and Johnson doesn’t get why the Brits can’t make a good moderately priced car. “When you think of the designs the English come out with, they’re absolutely beautiful. We’ve got our Aston Martins and our Jags, but they’re expensive. I’m talking about cars for the working guy, like a good Toyota Camry.”

Johnson worries U.S. automakers may face the same fate as the British. “If America’s not careful, it’s going to go the same way if they don’t start downsizing these motor cars. England is dead,” John says, referring to the auto industry. “England is just full of factories making cars for the Japanese. I don’t want that to happen here because America has got this great tradition of building beautiful engines, and in the old days, these great cars. Then the bean counters came in and screwed everything up.”

Success of 1980’s “Back in Black” and Johnson’s ChevyAfter the death of Bon Scott, Johnson joined AC/DC in 1980 and they released their landmark “Back in Black,” which has since sold almost 50 million albums. But back then he didn’t know how successful he would become, so he still lived in “a small house on a small street in a small place in Newcastle.” At just 32, Johnson got his first check of $30,000 from the album and bought his first new car — a “magnificent” 1980 black-and-white Chevrolet Blazer for 7500 pounds. No one in his hometown had ever seen one before.

“Nobody had one in Newscastle,” he emphasizes. “Everywhere I drove, it would draw a crowd. I loved that car.” It had an automatic tranny and Johnson laughs, “I’m still looking for an American with a stickshift!”

He took the Blazer to a friend’s farm to show off the unusual ride. “He was an old, old, gnarled Geordie farmer and he said [lowers his voice to sound old], ‘What the hell is that?’ ‘A Chevy Blazer.’ He went, ‘Bloody Yankee rubbish! That will not be able to go over the mountains, that one! I bet you couldn’t follow me in my Land Rover.'”

It was snowing, so Johnson put the Chevy in four-wheel drive and followed this old farmer in the hills outside of Newcastle in Northumbria. “He took us down gullies, really testing me. We got back in one piece. I got behind him and said, ‘I’ll tell you what — this doesn’t leak!'” Johnson laughs, referring to the well-known fact that Land Rovers leak.

Johnson’s driving capFor those petrolheads about to rock at an AC/DC concert, Johnson’s trademark driving cap is a salute to you.

“Once again, it’s got to do with cars,” he laughs. “My hair is big, curly hair and the sweat used to run into my eyes so badly. My brother had a Triumph Spitfire motor car and one of them English driving hats.” His brother went to a gig and offered his hat to prevent Johnson’s sweat from getting into his eyes while onstage. “I said, ‘I’m not putting that on, that looks bloody stupid, it’s a driving hat!’ He said, ‘Put it on, at least you’ll be able to see what the bloody freak you’re doing!’ So I put it on and after three songs in the second set, I looked at him, put my thumbs ups — ‘This is brilliant!’ He never did get that hat back.”

AC/DC’s “Black Ice” out October 20“Black Ice” drops October 20 exclusively at Walmart, followed by the launch of their world tour October 28. It promises AC/DC’s signature raw, heavy guitar-laden sound.

“It’s just one sound we’ve always done because we know what we like and that is basic, basic rock ‘n’ roll. Rock ‘n’ roll is a rare commodity to find these days. A lot of bands rock, but they keep forgetting to roll, and that’s where swing comes in.”

Johnson says the Young brothers wrote the track “Wheels” because they know he is a “car freak.” “What’s it about? It’s about [starts singing] ‘Wheels, running through my head, going through the red…’ What do you think, my darling, it’s about motorcars!”

In “War Machine,” Angus was watching a History Channel show that profiled war machines used in the Roman and Greek armies. The band sat around talking about the concept. “I said, ‘There’s not much difference — these huge boulder-throwing things were sent over walls to kill. The only difference now is we have laser-guided bombs with electronics, but they still kill civilians and soldiers.”

Johnson maintains the song is not a statement on the current war. “Every war is a daft war. There hasn’t been one sensible war. It’s about the machines they build for war. They still can’t cure cancer, but they can build something that can kill people.”

AC/DC and U.S. soldiersAC/DC’s music is a tonic for many U.S. soldiers in the war. The band was in the studio on “Howard Stern” recently, and after they left, a listener called to try to thank them for helping him through his recent tour of duty, saying he would blast “Highway to Hell” to bolster his courage on the way to a dangerous mission.

When asked about their influence on soldiers, Johnson gets emotional. They get many letters from soldiers and invite them backstage. “I love the soldiers. I used to be in the airborne myself, so I’m there with them. I used to jump out of airplanes, but I was never fired at. I was never in a real war and believe you me, it was scary enough fighting in pretendy wars.”

Johnson laughs, “Someone said the CIA have AC/DC in the weapons inventory. When they got Noriega out of the building, they played ‘Black in Black’ till it drove him mad. Out in the desert when the Imams go ([Johnson pretends to chant], the troops just go [and he belts those first few power chords of ‘Back in Black’] on the loudspeakers. You know what I mean?”

Michael Durant, who wrote “In the Company of Heroes” about his time in Mogadishu, asked if he could use the lyrics of “Hells Bells” in his book. “I said, ‘Surely, but why would you do that?’ ‘Brian, they threw me in prison, my legs were broken, and they kept opening the door and shooting at me. That was terrifying. I sat there thinking, I’m going to die. My buddies back in the helicopter squadron hooked some huge speakers to the skids of the helicopter and flew over the city, playing ‘Bambababam! [‘Hells Bells’]. They knew it was my favorite song. I crawled to the window, ripped my shirt off, waved it out the window. That’s how they found me.’ I still get goosebumps when I think about it,” Johnson says.

AC/DC — Last of the iTunes holdoutsEven fellow rock gods Metallica finally got on the iTunes bandwagon two years ago. AC/DC is famously the last major holdout. They’ve managed to not sell out their ideals — the belief in preserving the album concept, while iTunes encourages a singles mentality. Will you ever join iTunes? “We’re slow,” Johnson replies. “We’re a little bit shy of monsters. There’s got to be a point where you go, ‘hang on, is there any competition?'”

As this car chat comes to a close, Johnson admits his favorite show is “Top Gear,” and I thank him for sharing so much about his life with cars. “You’re bloody lovely! You little angel, you take care now,” he says happily. “Tootle pip, my darling!”